Announcer: Welcome to the INSIDE Inside Sales Podcast with your host, Darryl Praill. Join us every week as we interview industry leaders and experts to uncover the ways they're finding sales success today. Tune in as Darryl brings you actionable strategies and tactics that can immediately increase your sales and success.

Darryl Praill: Welcome back, folks. It's been a week. Can you believe that? It's been a week already. What have you done this week? What exciting things have you done? Quick, top of mind, did you think about it? Did you think about what you'd done this last week since we last talked to each other? Of course, this all assumes you listen to me every single week. I got to ask you a question, between you and I, I won't tell anybody else, are you a little bit like me and you pick and choose the episodes of your podcast that you listen to? If so, what drives you there? Is it the abstract? Is it just that you only have so many hours in the week, and you've got maybe your top five, top 10 podcasts and maybe you only to get to number three this week, and next week you get to number seven? There is so much truth in that. We make these decisions non- stop, even as it relates to our podcast listening habits, around what we choose to spend, to invest our time in. It's such a personal thing. If you're like me, when I read the abstract of that week's episode, whatever podcast it is, and I'm like," I don't really need help with that one," or," Yeah, I know that one," or I'm like," Oh, that I need help with, I'm going to listen to that one." It's so true. In the end, there's a simple acronym, right? It's WIIFM. What's in it for me? And if you're like me and you choose your podcast based on what's in it for me, then you can now relate to your sales prospect, because that's what they're doing to you. Have you thought about it that way? When you reach out to them, they're really saying," Yeah. If I listen to you, if I take time, if I take this call, if I reply to this email, if I submit my name and email address on this form, and I know they're going to call me, what's in it for me?" See that's the thing. When they do what's in it for me, they're not at this point in time really interested in your features or your functions or your services. I mean, sure, they've maybe looked at it a little bit, but even then when they look at it, they're not saying," Oh, I got to have that whizzbang feature." They're saying," If I had that whizzbang feature, I think that means it would allow me to do that. And if I did that, that pain would go away. So what's in it for me is that that feature allows me to solve that pain." All right? Notice it's not the feature, it's the outcome. What's in it for me? The same way you listen to your podcasts. Now, what's kind of funny about that, is a real life story. So real life story, you may not know this, I'm a little busy on social media on occasion. I like to voice my opinions and share some stories, and once in a while come out and tell you to attend an event or to listen to a podcast. But when I do that, I do that regularly. And I do that merely for the sake of a couple of things. One, it's personal branding. It's thought leadership. We've talked about this before on the show, you need to develop your own brand. Part of it is about developing a relationship with the tribe, giving back. As people are fond of saying these days, it's about making a deposit so that one day you can make that withdrawal. And how I see that reflected is when I make deposits, when I do content online, whether it's a video or it's a blog posts, or it's a how- to article, is that people consume the content. And over time, they consume multiple pieces of content. And then they come to me and they physically say," Hey, Darryl. I wonder if you could help me with this problem?" Now what's interesting about that whole scenario is the dynamic in play there. I never went to them and said," Hey, I've got this cool sales engagement platform that has all these great products and features." I actually spoke to the pains that we all live with everyday in sales and how to deal with it. And sometimes maybe my product can apply to them. Often, it doesn't. But there is the idea of me working with them because what's in it for them is they get a solution to a problem they may have. And when I do that, ultimately, they will come to me say," I trust you. I think you can add value. You seem to understand my world. You seem to have a point of view that resonated with me on my current circumstances. Maybe you can help me or maybe VanillaSoft is a solution I should evaluate." So you see what happens here? They didn't come to me and say," Show me your product. I'm doing a comparison between you and other products out there. I'm going to go feature for feature for feature to see how you compare and contrast." They're saying," What's in it for me? I think you've conveyed that you know how to solve that problem." And maybe that's VanillaSoft or maybe it's something else, I don't know. My point is, that every step along the way there, whether we are making a decision on a podcast we listen to, or we're talking to a prospect, the universal underlying theme I have always found is what's in it for me? Not how does your feature work? And too many of you are just doing praying and spraying with all your feature sets hoping that the customer can bridge that connection between what you just said on your rat- a- tat- tat of features to a problem they have, and you're getting it wrong. And that's why you're struggling. So how do we fix that? Well, the other day I was approached. I was approached by a fellow named Bob Moesta. If don't know Bob, let me tell you a bit about Bob. Bob is a lifelong innovator, and he's the co architect of the Jobs- to- be- Done theory. I love this. And he himself has helped develop and launch over 3, 500 products, and he's sold everything from design services, software, houses, consumer electronics and investment services, as well as launching seven startups. So listen to that. That's eclectic. You know what I'm saying? It's eclectic. So what is he doing that he can do all these different things? Well, this is going to tie back into the what's in it for me? He's also an adjunct lecturer at Kellogg School at Northwestern University, and he lectures on innovation at Harvard and MIT. So this is my way of saying he's smart. He's successful and he's smart. He's got a new book coming out, it's called" Demand- Side Sales", and he's going to detail for us today the success he's had by flipping the lens on sales. In other words, we're going to talk a little bit about what I call what's in it for me? He's got a whole different vernacular he uses. Bob, welcome to the show, my friend. How are you?

Bob Moesta: Well, thank you. I'm great. Excited to be here, Darryl.

Darryl Praill: Oh, that's fantastic. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about" Demand- Side Sales". Let's just level set because for those who are wondering on the genesis of Demand- Side and why that's called" Demand- Side Sales", I mean, it goes back to, economics, if you will, demand side versus supply side, I'm assuming. So why don't you maybe level set for us on the name and why it matters?

Bob Moesta: Yeah, so here's the thing is that... And this doesn't actually come from economics. So I'm an engineer, and I've been building products for... The way I say it is I've been breaking things for 50 years, I've been fixing things for 45 years, but I've been building things for about 30 years. And one of the things that comes up is this notion of, I was actually taught to be... to think about product and build products. And so what happens is I end up... I'm going to just show you a different view here for a second, which is, I've been basically thinking about it from what I call the supply side of the world, which is this notion of there's companies and brands and products. And the supply side is this aspect of where I've got a product. I make software, I make mattresses. I do whatever. And I was taught to build the best thing in the world, and that product has features and benefits, and it has experiences and attributes. And I go sell my product. The problem is there's this wall. And the wall is 10 feet thick, concrete, that's a 100 feet high. And what happens is when I try to look over it, but what I end up seeing out of it is this whole aspect of, I see market, I see lots of people. So if I'm making mattresses, the whole thing is who needs a mattress? Well, everybody needs a mattress. Who has a bedroom and who has an extra bedroom? Hotels. All these people need mattresses. But the reality is, is that at some point in time why do people buy mattresses is different than who needs a mattress. And so you start to actually realize what causes somebody to say, today's the day they need a new mattress. And you start to realize that it's not about a mattress at all. It's about sleep. And so you start to realize when you hop over this wall and you look at it from the other side, you actually see that it's a struggling moment that causes people to buy something new. And it's that what's in it for me mentality of they're struggling and they want to make progress. If people don't struggle, they actually don't do anything different. They're going to buy or use what they always used. And so what you start to do is when you study people, not stats of people, but individuals and say, what causes somebody to say," Today's the day I need [inaudible 00:09:34], or I need to actually... I'm going to buy a new mattress." It comes with a struggling moment embedded in it. And that struggling moment has a current product that they're using, and they're in a context that literally says, I can't do this. It's the problem. It's the pain that they have. But once they agree that the pain is something that they have to address, they now have a new desired outcome. It's not the features they need. It's the outcome that they're looking for. And somehow they have to connect your features to their outcome. And then what happens is, is they look at candidates. They can pick this one or that one or this one or that one, but they have hiring and firing criteria and they have trade- offs. And so part of this is that we end up saying that people don't actually buy products. They hire them to make progress in their lives. And what they do is they actually look over that wall and all they see is companies, brands, and products. And so part of this is what... my whole notion was is that being raised on the supply side of the world is that's what selling is. But on the demand side, it's like, how do people buy? And one of the things where I wrote the book was the aspect of they don't... and most business schools they don't teach sales at all. And partially because they think sales is all about products and techniques, it's not about actually, quote, a theory. So the reason why I've written it as I want to actually say, if we can actually understand how people buy, then we should actually be able to understand how we should set up the selling process. And so it's using the buying process or the job that they're hiring the product to do to actually understand, one, how they buy so we can actually understand how to sell better.

Darryl Praill: So a couple things. My mind is running. Where do I go first? So for those who are listening to the audio only version of the podcast, this is one of those weeks I would say-

Bob Moesta: I'm sorry.

Darryl Praill: No, no, no, it's all good. Cause we do audio and video, Bob, it's great. If you're on the audio only version of the podcast, go check out the video because what you're missing, and Bob's doing a great job describing it to you. But if you want it, he's got visuals. And they're very good. He's showing slides right now that are phenomenal charts. And what I like about it is Bob does a pretty good job just now of what I just said to you. What's in it for me? And you're wanting to sell features and functions, but I've got a pain, I've got a... and what he calls the struggling moment. Now you would hear other people say, well, what's their pain, or do you know your ideal customer profile? But what I like about what Bob's point is, is it's just so personal. What is their struggling moment? And then the second part he made, which was really, really huge and I don't hear a lot of people talk about this. So if that's the struggling moment, they have bad sleep, what's the outcome they desire? All right. So we're not talking about is it a coil spring, is it memory foam, is it king size, is it a queen size? None of that came up. What was their struggling moment? Poor sleep. What was the outcome they wanted? Lots of rest, who knows. So let me ask you this because... Do you guys know your customers struggling moment? Now, Bob, you've done like, was it over 3, 500 different products? Is there a routine you figured out to figure out the struggling moment?

Bob Moesta: Yeah. So here's the thing is the other part you start to realize is that the competitive set is actually very, very different from the customer's mind than it is from your mind. So you're comparing and contrasting for example, different mattresses. And the reality is what's competing with a mattress is ZzzQuil. It's a bottle of scotch. It's working out late at night. It's like all these other things that they don't even realize they need a mattress. It's sleeping in the BarcaLounger. And so you start to realize that at some point in time it's because we don't see the world through the customer's eyes and see what they see, we actually assume that Serta and Sleep Number and all these... and Casper all compete with each other when the reality is the true way in which to actually get them to go active is to say like, how many bottles ZzzQuil do you take before you realize you need a new mattress? That's actually how you start to get people to understand that they have a problem. And so part of this is most people don't even know that they're struggling. And part of marketing's job is to actually uncover the struggling and then enable them to go from what we call passive to active. And so I have a couple of frameworks that help me do that, and it's that it's taking a step back from the product and basically looking at it and saying like, what's the progress that somebody is trying to make when they pull something new into their life? So the first thing is I never talked to people who want to buy a mattress. I don't talk to people who want to buy a house. I talk to people who have already bought because the people who have bought have had to go through the entire process. They've had to actually muster enough energy to figure it all out. And so what I do is by talking... I use postmortems of past sales to then understand the forces of progress. What pushes them? What pulls them? What anxieties do they have? What habits do they have? And what do I have to do to overcome? Because everybody is switching from something to something else, from something old to something new, and the reality is doing nothing to doing something is still a switch. And so it's trying to understand what is the switching behavior for people and understanding how do we help them make the progress? This isn't about you alleviating the friction in it. In some cases you have to create friction because friction actually creates value. And so part of this is to understand the progress they're trying to make and the process that they go through in order to make that progress.

Darryl Praill: All right, so we're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back and I'm going to hit Bob up with a number of more questions because I love this conversation. If you want to, if you want to hit pause or you don't want to put your phone or your radio on silent in the commercial. That's cool. Think about this. Again, what is your customer struggling with? What's the friction they have? So we'll be right back.

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Darryl Praill: One of the things that you talked about, Bob, so when we left you were talking about the pushes, the pulls, the habits, the anxieties of your prospect, and that was really... I love those words. Those are words I don't hear often. We hear the word pain over and over again, but you're really making it personal and relatable. The word anxiety. I love the word anxiety. When I say that word, I get anxious because I can just so relate to it. And for the audience, what makes your prospect anxious? Have you thought about that? And I love the point that Bob's getting at where he was talking about, it's not that I'm looking for a mattress. There's another problem underlying. It's up to you to figure it out. And Bob made a really good point and it was you have to create friction to get to the value. In other words, sometimes you have to ask those uncomfortable questions. A lot of this is about the perspective that you as a sales rep take into the process. And Bob, I want to poke you a little bit here because you use the word... I've heard you use the word concierge or mentor or coach. So I'm going to ask you to explore that to me, explain that to me, but while you're doing that... so folks, listen to me. Bob is going to suggest that you become not a sales rep pushing a mattress or a software product or a widget. You become a concierge. You become a mentor to your prospect. What do you mean by that, Bob?

Bob Moesta: So, I'm going to share my screen again. Let me just pull that up. So here's the thing is the basic premise is this, is people don't buy products. They actually hire them to make progress in their life. And so there's a couple of things. One is that they have to be in a struggling moment. So just who I am doesn't make me a prospect. Just because I'm 55 and I live in this zip code and I have this income and I have this title doesn't make me a prospect. It not only who I am, but it's where I am, it's when I am, and it's why. And so part of this is understanding this struggling circumstances that I have and what's pushing me to the edge. And there's this river in between, but at some point if you push me to the edge and I don't actually see anything on the other side, I just complain a bunch. I just make it... At some point it's like, this sucks. But the moment I can see the other side, all of a sudden I have something that pulls me to the other side. And so I don't really care what people actually bought. So I actually talked to people who bought my product and some people who basically bought somebody else's product to understand the progress they're trying to make, the circumstance and the progress. Because look, there's a thousand ways I can help that person to get across that river. I can give him a boat. I can teach him to swim. I can dig a tunnel. I can build a bridge. I can get a helicopter. I can go on forever. But if I actually understand the situation they're in and the outcome that they want, I can then decide whether I can actually help them or not, or literally say," You know what? You need somebody else to help you because I don't build bridges. I just build boats." And so all of a sudden you start to realize what can I do around that? And so part of this is to actually understand what that gap is. The reality is, is it really gets back to these forces that if this is where they're at A and this is the new way, there's a push of the situation. There's something that's pushing them that says," What I'm doing isn't good enough." And what happens is they have to have an idea of the new way that creates pull. But here's the thing, is the moment they have pull there's this waterline here where underneath the waterline there's anxiety is the new solution like," Well, how would we buy that? I didn't budget for that. What do I do with my old data? How do..." All of these questions pop up. And so we talk about pain and gain, but we never talk about the objections that people are going to have. The other part is there's an unwritten other force over here called the habit of the present, which is the things they love about what they already do. It's the things that are... they're like," I don't really want to give that up." And so part of this is to realize that there's these two underlying forces that if we don't actually understand them, we actually don't know how to sell. We just actually add more and more features that literally think we can get them to close. But the reality is like, it's a balance of understanding all these forces and how they help enable people to go from A to B.

Darryl Praill: So I want to stop in this visual here. Again, guys, if you're listening to the audio version, this is the one week I would say go get the video. Bob has done a great job of the slide here. And he uses the reference of what's below the water line. And so he says, what's above the water line, if you will, that we can see. Kind of like the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg. He talks about the current situation, I've got the push of the situation. I've got the pain, the anxiety I'm feeling right now. And then the other side where you want to be is that pull of that new solution. You go that's what I want, I want better sleep. That's the pull. But I want to focus for a little bit in this slide because it's so powerful. What's below the waterlines? Have you thought about this before? I had loved Bob's metaphor here. In the current moment what's below the waterline, what you don't see is what he calls the habit, the habit of the present. And it truly is a habit. I'm just going to keep on using Excel because I know Excel.

Bob Moesta: I know how to use it. It's on my computer. It's there. I know it's a pain, but it's still okay.

Darryl Praill: It's still okay. And what he called... He uses the term historical allegiance. You hear about it. He goes," I know how to use it. It's okay. I trust Microsoft." So then what's on the... remember, we want to get to the pull of that new solution. That's where we want to get them to. Get them through their struggles to the new solution. But what's beneath the waterline to make them go there is the anxiety. Remember that word again? The anxiety of your new solution and all that surrounds that process, competition, budget, everything else. Everything here that's below the water line is what you're supposed to figure out in discovery. All right. But you need to go in knowing that they're anxious and your scary because you represent change.

Bob Moesta: So here's the other part of this though, is that all of these forces build over time and that whether you're buying a new mattress or buying software or buying a car or buying a pack of gum, there's a first thought. There's something called passive looking where if you... I think of first thought is questions create spaces in the brain for solutions to fall into. And if they're not actually asking a question, there's no space in their brain for your solution to even hit. And so part of it is, is you have to be able to create a space. And once you create a space, now they actually can see things that they the day before they couldn't actually see, or they didn't have a place to put it. That's where they learn in passive looking. Active looking is where they're trying to see possibilities. And then at some point they're then deciding, but there's these events that have to happen that enable them to move from mode to mode. And so the reality is, is that when we think about sale, when we think about this... Let me go to this slide, which is the first thought is really about making the space and there's things that they do and say in order to do that. And passive looking is actually about learning about the problem, learning about a... Most people don't actually have a solution in mind first. They have a problem in mind, they have the consequences, the side effects, all the... They're like," How do I actually... How do I save time doing from Excel?" They don't even know there's a way to automate it, for example. They don't even know what a macro is. They just know, how do I do repeated things over and over again so I don't have to do that? Active looking as this notion of seeing possibilities. This is where I call it magic wanding." Oh, I'd love to have that. Oh, I'd love to have..." This is where they talk about features, but really deciding is where they have to connect the dots and they have to make trade- offs between features because they can't have it all. Nobody can have it. And if you're a salesperson who convinces people to say like," Ooh, I can give it to you all." My belief is you're not actually doing justice because value is actually determined by both that context and outcome. But it's also the fact of the contrast of what they can't have or they don't need that enables them to determine value. And so trade- offs are an essential part of value. But once people make a decision, now I actually have to start to actually deliver on the progress. So what are the metrics that they actually see to make progress? So this is where I detail out where every time I build a product, it's about how do we detail the progress that people are trying to make. And then what's the role of marketing and sales and customer support in the entire process to do that. So the reality is, is it's how do we see that timeline? And then understand what are the things we have to do to help them make progress? We don't convince them of anything. They convince themselves. And so how do we work together to enable people to make progress with our product or our product or our service?

Darryl Praill: So what's brilliant about the slide that Bob was just showing, he calls it the customer's buying timeline, is that it actually... What it does is it actually marries the role of marketing with the role of sales with the role of support or success. And I would suggest you do a couple of things. I would suggest you go to Amazon and I would suggest you buy a whole bunch of copy of" Demand- Side Sales". Then I suggest you give that to your leaders in those respective teams that you work alongside, because those people, marketing, support and success, drive your success. Drive your commission check, honest to God. And then you use this slide and what you learn in that book to sit around and have a conversation so you can understand the buying timeline. Now, what I like about this is Bob talks about the timeline. You've heard us talk about maybe the buyers journey. Same concept, but what I like about timeline is that it's a temporal element. There is a timeline. Now Bob, we are really tight on time, ironically, but you make a point that talks about how we have this timeline, but buyers can move back and forth in that timeline. Talk to me a bit about that.

Bob Moesta: Yeah. So here's the thing is that people actually go into active looking and they start to learn everything about your product. And then they say, then they ghost me. It's like they go away. And then six months later, they come back and they say, can I get a quote? And the reality is what happens is they think they know enough. They move to active looking. You actually explain everything to them, but now they have a thousand more questions so they go back to passive looking. And you think they're ghosting you when they're actually background processing to figure out how to make it work. And then out of nowhere, they come and buy. And you're like, I don't know how that works. But this process starts to actually understand what do people say and do when they're in these different modes to understand sometimes... I could be in deciding, and then something happens at the company or something happens like a pandemic. And it's like, Ooh, I'm going... it's not that I'm struggling with it. It's like, I don't know what to do with it. I go back to passive looking because I don't know how to make the decision. And then when I come back, it's like I'm now having... actually might be in a different job. And so part of this is to realize like, these are modes that people are in, think of them as hats that they wear as they go through it. And when we have a sales funnel, it's like there's only one way of sales funneling and that's out. And so to be honest, this helps us start to articulate the behaviors that people have. And to be honest, I've helped companies. For example, they had one demo, but if I have a demo in passive looking it's about learning language and hearing what other people do and whatever, but a demo and active looking is about all the possibilities. And a demo for deciding is actually about making trade- offs. And so you start to realize everybody tries to make one demo and force everybody to a demo, but it depends on where they're at in their timeline where they're buying timeline, as opposed to our sales funnel says, market, book demos, close.

Darryl Praill: It's so fun. I love this slide again, because there's so many things about this that resonate with me. Part of it is what I just saw there. Look at that timeline. It's really no different than your actual sales process. You have different sales stages, maybe in your CRM as you move them along when the percentage of likelihood of closing increases, it's exact same way. And they can move back and forth. And I love the point he was making that maybe they were in active looking and they went back to passive looking because they didn't know how to make a decision, or they didn't know where to get the money from or whatever. It could be lots of reasons. Or it could be just fear of change. Lots of reasons. So that's another reason why you need to have multiple champions in the sales cycle to help move it along, because if one gets stuck, the other one maybe will help them out. So this is how you need to understand it. And it's so cool because I know we just made an acquisition here, a company called Autoklose. So they do a lot of sales nurturing, which is kind of... If you look at... They're just checking it out the first stage, that's marketing. The second stage, passive looking, that would be the sales nurturing side. I'm just going to send them emails casually from me. And then the active looking now you're in the sales engagement side, and now they're in the decision- making side. Well, that's your sales opportunity. Yes or no. It's a logical flow of your tech stack and your processes. The timeline works really, really well to convey that idea. So again, another reason what you should do, sit down with your colleagues and go through that timeline and understand it.

Bob Moesta: So it's just funny where... So I'm coaching a few teams at this point around... Sales teams around it. And one of the things I've kind of taught them to do is ask people where they're at in their buying timeline. And the first question they asked is," Well, what does that mean?" And then you can actually explain it to them and Oh, by the way, they can self identify exactly where they're at. And so part of this is like... Because we used to ask, we would say," Well, where are they in the sales funnel?" Nobody wants to ask that question. But the fact is understanding where people sit in the sales... in their buying timeline is actually a way in which to say like," Well, that means you need to learn. Let me help you. Let me give you some resources to learn around these things."" Oh, that would be great."" Oh, you need to onboard people to get... because when we get to active looking, you can actually have a team of people. So let me tell you how that works." And so all of a sudden you can actually educate them about the buying process and they're actually very comfortable with it. Where if you're talking about trying to sell them, they're always worried that you're going to give... try to get them to do something they don't want to do. Nobody wants to be sold.

Darryl Praill: Nobody wants to be sold. It all began with me rattling on about what's in it for me. All right. And that goes back to the struggle we have here. Folks, we're out of time. That's Bob Moesta, author of Demand- Side Sales and academic brilliant rockstar entrepreneur all wrapped up in one. You should follow him on LinkedIn. You should follow him on Twitter. You can learn more about Bob at his company, therewiredgroup. com, or go to his own personal website, bobmoesta. com. We're out of time folks. Thank you, Bob. We're going to see you again next week. No matter what that says in the description, I'm going to see you next week. I'll talk to you soon. Take care, have a great week. Happy selling.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to another episode of the INSIDE Inside Sales Podcast with your host, Darryl Praill. We hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, we would greatly appreciate you taking a moment to leave us a review on the platform you're listening to the show from today. Also, please feel free to share this program with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Darryl will be back again next week.